by Dan Pedersen
They thought that as the school evolved it could have a greater impact as an independent command. But Pringle resisted. Scarcity of resources wasn’t the only reason. There was also the issue of prestige. Though the public didn’t know about Topgun yet, the wider Navy certainly did, and the Air Force had taken notice too. Whichever command “owned” the Navy Fighter Weapons School stood to play a large role in defining the direction of tactics and training. Its officers stood to have their careers enhanced.
That spring Roger Box’s influence with Chick Smith began showing some promise. Like all good leaders, Chick usually got people to work together. He directed a ninety-day trial period in which Topgun would operate semi-independently. At the end of that period, Chick would hold a conference to evaluate whether the trial balloon rose or popped. They blocked out some aircraft and people as their own and moved forward independently. Roger managed the ninety days without a hitch. Before the evaluation could take place, he was selected to command a fleet squadron. Dave Frost was left to represent Topgun at a showdown with the Miramar brain trust. Roger’s absence wasn’t going to help the schoolhouse’s cause at that meeting, which was bound to be contentious.
The evening before the decisive meeting, Commander Pringle called Dave to the VF-121 headquarters, where Pringle and his exec pressed him to declare the three-month test a failure, so that everybody could simply continue business as usual. But Frost had done his homework. He came loaded with data showing how much better Topgun had performed when it was operating separately. Though he realized it might hurt his career, he held his ground, defending Topgun like an accomplished attorney making his case. The meeting broke up in disagreement at 9 p.m. They all knew they would reconvene the next morning to finish their arguments, then it would be up to Captain Smith.
The next morning, neither side conceded anything and temperatures rose. Having heard enough, Smith pounded the table, stunning the participants, who had never seen the Fleet Air Miramar commander so agitated. Smith and his aide left the room. After what seemed like hours they returned, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop about ten degrees. Because the verdict was in: Topgun would become a separate command.
It was a quiet celebration at Miramar. I was away on a cruise, and most of the other Original Bros had gone to new duty stations too. Until the decision could be implemented, Topgun’s instructors would continue to have responsibilities at the RAG. But the school was now in a real official competition for operating assets, people, aircraft, and funds. It would take a strong team to make it come together.
In January 1972, Captain Smith cut the order. Topgun became a permanent detachment, appearing on the RAG organizational chart with a solid line instead of a dotted line connecting it to Chick Smith’s headquarters. That little tweak to the org chart made all the difference. Suddenly we were assured of adequate staffing, equipment, fuel, and operating funds. Our program was free of its former parent organization.
Roger Box became Topgun’s first commanding officer, rather than “officer in charge.” His tenure was brief. When he was transferred to the fleet on short notice, Mugs McKeown picked up the torch. He had the seniority, charisma, and talent to handle the job well. But he too was set to deploy to Tonkin Gulf. With his departure, Dave Frost, Roger’s advocate extraordinaire, became the skipper, serving until Mugs returned from the fleet and relieved him.
In the spring of 1972, after President Nixon restarted the aerial bombing of North Vietnam, Topgun’s graduates started tallying victories. By the time Operation Linebacker began, we’d graduated several more classes and were loaded for bear when the air war resumed in earnest.
One afternoon Frosty got a call from Washington. It was his old rival, Dirt Pringle. The former skipper of the RAG had moved on to an influential billet: executive assistant to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the chief of naval operations himself. For an upcoming meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CNO wanted to present a review of the air-to-air box score. Frosty was to address an Air Force group at Nellis Air Force Base to discuss tactics and organization as well as demonstrate the use of our adversary program. As he put it, “The Navy was going to poke the Air Force in the eye.” Dave worked up a presentation of the new Navy tactics. As he and his guys had just revised the Topgun manuals, it was a fairly easy assignment.
The room was crowded—obviously word had gotten around. Dave explained how Topgun operated, and noted the cautious approach the USAF took to air combat training. All of their dogfighting was F-4 against F-4. Never did an Air Force pilot see a plane imitating a MiG.
He got a lot of pushback during the question-and-answer session. A couple of accented voices stood out at the back of the room. As it happened, the Air Force Fighter Weapons School at Nellis had some Israelis among their foreign exchange pilots. One of them was my friend Eitan Ben Eliyahu. He and his cohort, the talented and cerebral Asher Snir, who had twelve and a half kills, had fine reputations that preceded them. Impatient, I suppose, with all the discussion of a matter they considered settled, one of them stood up and said, basically, “We agree with the Navy!” That seemed more or less to end the argument for the moment.
Some Air Force pilots were catching on in the meantime. Junior officers were alive to the dynamism of the Navy’s Loose Deuce cruising formation, and the offensive potential of exploiting the Egg. The USAF also began to understand the value of dissimilar combat training, as well as the tactics and culture of the Loose Deuce. The blue suits learned fast, and the training environment became one of mutual respect with a healthy exchange of ideas.
The Air Force sent two Nellis instructors to fly with Topgun for a week. Major Richard “Moody” Suter, who had flown with us at Area 51, and Captain Roger Wells were experienced tacticians. The two pilots spent a week flying in the front seat of the TA-4s, seeing everything from 1 vs. 1 up to 4 vs. 4. Quickly absorbing the nuances of Topgun’s syllabus, they returned to Nellis to start urging the Air Force’s leadership to come around. Moody, like the great Steve Smith, could sell sand to an Arab. In late 1972, within a few months of the Miramar visit, the “junior service” stood up its first dedicated aggressor squadron, eventually maintaining a force of two dozen T-38 Talons and F-5 Tigers to mimic enemy planes and tactics. The cross-pollination of Topgun’s tactics into the Air Force’s training would not bear fruit in time to help it reverse its fortunes in the Vietnam War, but the foundation had been laid for a longer-term, mutually beneficial relationship.
Topgun would influence the development of the next-generation fighter, the F-14 Tomcat. We were consulted on new aircraft requirements and weapons acquisition as well. But the future of fighter aviation seemed a distant concern in 1972 as the ground war in Vietnam took a turn for the worse.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TOPGUN GOES TO WAR
Yankee Station
Spring 1972
After the Tet Offensive and the siege at Khe Sanh in early 1968, the U.S. presence in Vietnam diminished, both on the ground and in the air. By the spring of ’72, with President Nixon’s policy of “Vietnamization” requiring South Vietnam to handle its own defense, only ten thousand American troops remained in country. About a hundred aircraft were on hand in the country to support them. Another hundred or so planes were based in Thailand. Two carriers on Yankee Station fielded another 140 aircraft. Watching this drawdown in U.S. forces, our enemy prepared a massive ground offensive against the South.
On March 30, thirty thousand North Vietnamese Army soldiers, supported by a hundred tanks acquired from Red China, invaded South Vietnam. A few days later, another twenty thousand troops, also supported by tanks, struck South Vietnam from Laos. They were the vanguard of a Communist army that would ultimately field three hundred thousand troops and six hundred armored vehicles.
The South Vietnamese Army, caught by surprise, buckled. When desperate Allied soldiers called for ground support, the Air Force and Marine Corps squadrons in country were hamstrung by the monsoon season. What aircraft did get through
faced shoulder-fired SA-7 missiles, which took a heavy toll. Within a week, the situation grew dire.
To stem the tide, President Richard Nixon unleashed the full weight of American airpower. Air Force F-4 squadrons flew in from all over the world, and the rotation plan that kept two carriers on Yankee Station was replaced by a full-on surge. Soon the Coral Sea, Hancock, Kitty Hawk, and Constellation were operating in the Gulf of Tonkin, with the America, Midway, and Saratoga ready to deploy. It would be the largest concentration of naval airpower since World War II. With the restrictive rules of engagement rescinded or modified, it was a different war.
On May 10, President Nixon ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor and other North Vietnamese ports, putting a stop to Soviet deliveries of MiGs and surface-to-air missiles. Meanwhile, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy planes hammered North Vietnamese supply lines. Bridges collapsed under a barrage of first-generation smart weapons, including laser-guided bombs, delivered by Navy Grumman A-6 Intruders and A-7 Corsair IIs. Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses struck MiG airfields around Hanoi.
The enemy tried to defend these important targets. Flying MiG-21 and MiG-19 interceptors, the North Vietnamese pilots found themselves in wild dogfights with USAF F-4 Phantoms. On May 10, three MiG-19s went down to air-to-air missiles, but the North Vietnamese pilots scored two kills. The Air Force continued to use the old-style World War II–era tactics that we found so limiting. During the climax of the morning’s air battles, a three-kill F-4 pilot named Major Robert Lodge and his rear-seater, Captain Roger Locher, had just fired a missile at a MiG when another one slipped behind them. Lodge’s wingman called out a warning, but it was too late. The MiG pilot opened fire with his cannon and tore the Phantom apart. Major Lodge stayed with the aircraft to give his back-seater a chance to escape. Locher ejected and was eventually rescued after an epic escape and evasion experience. Lodge was killed in action. The Air Force pilots were brave men and good aviators; yet their service’s failure to learn the lessons of Rolling Thunder’s air battles cost them. On day one of Operation Linebacker, the Air Force barely topped a one-to-one kill ratio in air combat.
The Navy was on a different path. North Vietnamese MiGs encountered a new Navy. The alpha strikes included electronic countermeasures aircraft that jammed the radio frequencies the North Vietnamese pilots used. When they ran into Topgun-trained pilots, the tactics we developed at Miramar changed the game altogether.
The Constellation’s air wing hit the Haiphong area on May 10. Thirty jets sped over the beach, the pilots determined to inflict maximum damage on a vital target area that had been off-limits for virtually the entire war. Flying escort in an F-4J Phantom was Lieutenant Curt Dosé, who had finished second in his 1971 Topgun class, where he represented my old squadron, VF-92. When Dosé returned from Topgun, he became the weapons training officer. His knowledge and experience percolated throughout the squadron and changed how it fought.
As Dosé and his section leader, Austin “Hawk” Hawkins, orbited between the enemy airfields and the target area, the MiG-21s began to rise. Our radar picket ship, USS Chicago, detected the enemy activity at Kep airfield. In the past, we would have been forced to wait for the MiGs to come to us and pose a threat. Now, with the handcuffs removed, the U.S. pilots could break straight for Kep. The Navy planes took only a few minutes to arrive.
At five thousand feet, Curt Dosé spotted two MiGs waiting to take off on the north end of the runway, plus a few more in revetments in the dispersal area. Dosé called to Hawkins, “Silver Kite, in-place turn port. Go!” Both Phantoms went to burner and dove for the deck, breaking the speed of sound on the way down. The MiG-21s, alerted now, lifted off the runway and jettisoned their external fuel tanks.
Dosé in the lead, the Phantoms streaked right over Kep’s patchwork asphalt and concrete runway at Mach 1. The sudden switch from the cooler air at altitude down to the humidity down low caused Dosé’s canopy to fog, obscuring his view of the fleeing MiG-21s. He shut off the air-conditioner system, which cleared the cockpit almost immediately, and picked up both MiG-21s again.
The chase took them down the treetop level and below. More than once, Dosé lifted a wing to avoid hitting branches. They wound around rolling hills as the MiGs played for time, trying to get their speed up while their fellow pilots launched from Kep to come to their rescue.
Behind the MiGs, with more energy and speed, Dosé and his leader controlled the fight. As the range narrowed and the MiGs passed through thirty degrees in their left turn, Dosé pulled the stick back and maneuvered from a lag pursuit into a perfect setup behind one of the MiGs. His Sidewinder growled in his ear and he fired the missile at about fifteen hundred feet. It missed, exploding behind the MiG. He fired a second missile. This one streaked straight into the MiG’s tailpipe. A moment passed before the enemy plane blew apart, killing its pilot.
The lead MiG remained. Hawkins had expended his Sidewinders at it, which either lost tracking or malfunctioned. By now, the pursuit had taken the F-4 pilots back around toward Kep in this left-turn chase. Down to his Sparrow missiles now, Dosé asked Jim McDevitt, his back-seater, if he could get a lock on the MiG. They were too low; the ground clutter kept interfering with the missile’s ability to track the enemy aircraft.
For a brief few seconds, the Americans and North Vietnamese were at an impasse. Without guns, the F-4s couldn’t finish off the MiG, and with their remaining missiles outside their performance envelope, they would either need to break contact or figure out something else, all while blasting over the treetops at 550 knots.
Dosé, an aggressive and instinctive pilot, was not about to break contact. Instead, he pitched up into the vertical in a sort of barrel roll to try and fire a Sparrow in front of the fleeing MiG. He knew it wouldn’t hit, but he hoped to spook the North Vietnamese pilot enough to get him to abandon his turn and give Hawkins a good shot at him.
While inverted at the top of the barrel roll, Dosé automatically checked his six. The other pair of MiG-21s on the runway were right behind them at their five o’clock and closing.
Dosé called them out, and both Phantom drivers broke hard right, toward their attackers, then went to full burner again. They broke through the sound barrier on their way to almost a thousand miles an hour. That sort of maneuver would have left a MiG-17 in the dust. A MiG-21? That Russian fighter possessed exceptional power and speed, and of course the always worrisome guns. A MiG-21 was climbing right up Hawkins’s six. The enemy pilot looked to have the F-4 cold.
There was still one trick in the Topgun toolbox. The classified Have Doughnut program at Area 51 had taught us that at such speeds, the MiG-21 couldn’t maneuver like an F-4. The two Americans broke hard into each other in a crossing turn, making an X in the sky. The Loose Deuce tactics worked beautifully as the cross turn cleared each other’s tails.
Just then, the MiG pilot launched one of the Sidewinder copies known as the AA-2 Atoll missile. Hawkins’s tight break defeated the missile—it exploded behind his F-4. The miss combined with the F-4s crossing maneuver convinced the MiG pilot he couldn’t stay in this fight. He fled for Kep after Dosé stuck his nose at him and went after him. The Topgun grad gave up the pursuit and rendezvoused with Hawkins for the return to the Constellation.
The next day the phone rang at Dosé’s parents’ house in La Jolla. Captain Robert Dosé had served as a naval aviator during World War II and had experienced his own dogfights in the western Pacific. The caller, a Navy insider who knew the significance of what had happened, told Dosé’s dad, “Bob, your boy got a MiG yesterday.”
Bob and Curt Dosé became the only Navy father and son pilots to down enemy aircraft.
That fight over Kep was just a warm-up for the rest of the Navy’s day over North Vietnam on May 10. The Constellation’s air wing refueled and rearmed for a second alpha strike set for the afternoon against the railyard at the port of Hai Duong. The air wing flew straight into a mass MiG intercept, creating the largest single dogfight of the Vietnam War.
The MiGs raced into the strike group, initially blowing past the escorting F-4s. A pair of MiG-17s caught an A-7 Corsair down low and gave chase. The frantic American pilot called out, “MiG on my tail! I’ve got a MiG on my tail!”
Overhead, Topgun graduates Matt Connelly and his RIO, Lieutenant Tom Blonski, were covering the strike just north of the target area. They heard the call for help, but without any context, they couldn’t rush to the rescue.
“Where are you?” Matt called out over the radio before banking hard to check the sky below. Sure enough, he and Blonski caught sight of the two MiG-17s hard on the heels of a lone A-7. The Corsair driver was trying to shake them with a hard left turn, but the MiG-17s stayed with him.
It would be a race to see who got into position to shoot first. The A-7 fled, the MiG-17s in hot pursuit. Matt rolled right and dove nearly inverted after the MiGs, keeping them on his nose. As he approached their altitude, he rolled left and pulled in behind them. It was a masterful maneuver, but he still ended up about sixty degrees off the lead MiG’s tail and he couldn’t get a good tone with his Sidewinder.
He fired anyway. The MiG pilot saw the launch and reacted instantly, pulling straight up and flipping inverted in an Immelmann. The 17 flashed right over Matt and Tom’s canopy and vanished behind them.
The Topgun grad leveled out and lit his burners. The F-4 extended away from the fight, then Matt used the vertical, intending to get above the MiGs before dropping like an anvil on them for a second pass.
Instead, as his F-4 streaked into a near-vertical climb, both pilot and RIO discovered they had just flown into the middle of a wild dogfight involving almost fifty friendly and North Vietnamese aircraft.
A MiG sped right across their nose, bending into a right-hand turn. Matt rolled after him and turned hard to pull enough lead to get a missile shot. The MiG started to roll slowly left. Knowing from our Topgun curriculum that one of the MiG-17 Fresco’s weaknesses was its roll rate at high speeds, and also knowing that its pilot had a blind spot directly to his rear thanks to the bulky ejection seat, Matt exploited the situation. As the MiG rolled out of the turn, the F-4 slid directly behind his tailpipe about a mile away. Unable to see the F-4, the MiG pilot began rolling left. Connelly nailed him with a Sidewinder. He felt the heat of the blast as his aircraft flew through it.
